A Story For Imke
by Alice Addison
Summary: There never was a Bella Swan who came to Forks. But instead, there was another, who came and enchanted the mysterious boy who isolated himself from the town. A quick eight months hold them inseparable, until the cancer slowly takes Imke away from him. The story told is Edward's account of the beauty who had captivated him, heart and mind, until her goodbye.
1. An End as the Beginning

It seemed like she shouldn't have been pretty now. It was logical that she wouldn't be. But God, how she was always pretty. Through every kind of weather, whether standing in the sunshine or the rain, dancing or standing still, Edward never had any option but to see her as beautiful. Even while in a dimly lit room, eyes solemn and sad, her lips flattened with lack of optimism. But that wasn't a descriptor of how she looked now. Despite what was expected of her in the current situation, she was smiling at him. Those caramel eyes of her were tired, skin chalky and pale, but her smile made her seem brighter ... as if he could focus only on her pretty face, he'd be able to forget how sick she was.

Her hand lacked its usual warmth, and Edward more than often wished he could have been warm for her. To hold her close and keep her from being so cold and so frail. She did look so frail here; those machines surrounding her were so dominant, ominously beeping or breathing and constantly reminding her that they were in control of her life. The bed, the gown, they were both too big for her skeletal frame, and they seemed to devour her. She slowly moved her eyes from his and went to look out the window at the rain, which was slowly stopping before the sun set for the say, leaving the gray clouds to the blackness of night. She let out a convulsive shiver without cue, and Edward instinctively removed his hand from hers to pull his sweater off. "Come here, my love..." He mused, his voice softer, and much weaker, than it often was. But he had been here with her for so long, it exhausted his mind and his emotions. He spread the sweater around her torso, though unable to put it on her because of the tubes in her arms. It would've been a poor decision to try. He knew it was often okay to give patients their personal items to wear if they've had such an extensive stay, but ... in case something were to go foul without warning, it would be a barrier to saving her life.

But Edward had to catch himself from thinking this. It was a hypothetical he'd contemplated for a while, and with every passing day he spent with Imke, he knew the "if" of the situation was slowly growing into a "when." The truth was a pain to think of, but Edward couldn't cower away from the reality of the situation for much longer. It wasn't anything more than a matter of time.

The notion alone was enough to cause him to move from the chair next to her bed, to the bed itself. First he sat at its foot, stroking her side gently. His fingers felt like feathers, brushing up against her discolored and bruised skin. There was a great deal of morphine in her system, keeping her from as much pain as possible, but she could note through this that his touch felt nice.

"Will you ... please come closer?" It was the first thing she'd said the entire day, possible a longer length of time. The hours blurred after the first few days; after a while, it had become a switch between the hours passed and the hours left. The poor girl, her voice was so weak, and within it he could hear evidence of the morphine not being sufficient. She was in pain. Her breath had become notably louder, and had slowly shown itself in the past several hours to become more desperate – breathing was no longer simply an unnotable task; now it was a fight. Even with the nasal cannula, it was a struggle for her, he could tell. He avoided all the tubes and sensors, brushing them away from where he soon laid down beside her, on his side so he could see her pretty young face. Too young to be here, struggling for breath. If she made it to tomorrow, Edward knew Carlisle would suggest putting her on a ventilator. Edward moved away from the thought; it wasn't easy to imagine. The epitome of vulnerability, seeing his girl's life completely controlled by machines, unable to live without them. Though he'd never acknowledge it, he was hoping that if her life were to end soon, it would be before then. Before that pathetic state, while she was still able to retain a piece of her rapidly fading humanity. Before the morphine felt like nothing at all, in comparison to the pain of her body failing her so rapidly that the doctors could do nothing to comfort her. He didn't want that for her.

He kept his eyes on the paneled ceiling for a few moments, the fluorescent ceiling lights off for the night, before turning his head to see her again, to wrap his arm around her abdomen. He held most of its weight from leaning on her, knowing surely It would cause her discomfort. He saw her looking back at him. However much her body had changed, disintegrated in the face of disease, how those eyes had stayed so much the same. So beautiful and gentle, the eyes that peered back at him weakly in the near-darkness, they were those that he'd looked into for the first time eight months ago. They were just a bit more tired. "Are you in pain?" He whispered to her, and she shook her head. He was able to see how she hesitated to lie to him. She didn't like to lie, but she didn't like to worry him either. "They can't give you any more morphine right now, Imke." He told her, head heavy as he did. He didn't like to see his girl in pain and have an inability to fix it. She nodded slowly, understanding. She struggled for a few minutes to form words again, her tongue heavy against the bottom of her mouth, throat feeling so thin.

"They think ... I'm going to die soon."

"Shhh." He stopped her. He ignored the truthfulness of the statement; Carlisle had told him so curtly this morning, to let Edward know the reality of the situation. But optimism was what was needed here, for Imke. And for him. She stopped saying it, though she didn't seem afraid. She seemed ... content. In pain, weak, but content that her love was laying beside her. She managed to discard more of her slowing breath:

"You ... your eyes." She smiled to herself as she said this. "How could someone so han-dsome, come to love me?" With that, a small laugh which quickly fell into a painful sounding cough, the swelling of the throat.

He placed a hand on her cold cheek, stroking it gently until it subsided. He could manage no response, aside from a gentle and somewhat forced smile. It was the best he could manage under the pressure of knowing this was very possibly the last night he would spend with her.

"Tell me ... how you came to do such a thing ... as silly as loving me ..." Another hacking cough. A drop of blood had spattered on her chin, and he took care to wipe it away, resisting temptation as easily as he ever had with her. His eyes came to meet hers again and he brushed her curly dark hair back with his hand. He smiled back at her, and cleared his throat. "You want the whole story, do you love? It would take years to describe how much I have come to love you." That made her smile wider. Her dimples were present as ever, making her youth radiate from her.

"As long as there is ..." Her voice trailed.

"From the beginning?" He let his forehead gently fall against hers , and she nodded. He gave her a gentle kiss on the nose as a confirmation:

"From the beginning."


	2. Dom

Seattle was not as advertised, she noted to herself. She took a moment to see the differences between the pamphlet in her lap about Seattle, with its bright and shining cityscape, versus what she saw out the window: a rainy and gray sky. She sat on the Greyhound with a large, poor-condition suitcase between her knees; it had been her focus for the past thirty minutes to keep it from slipping and hitting the man next to her. Though she'd only been in America for under two hours, she noted to herself how hot-headed these people could be. She didn't want to give a reason to upset anyone, aside from the damage she'd already done on the matter with her poor English skills, which upset the harbor master when he tried to ask her questions about her visa. Her mother had told her before Imke departed: "Do not worry, my dear, about your English. The best solution is to practice while you're there, and soon enough they won't even know you're from elsewhere." Imke had nodded and smiled at the time, though her mother's promise seemed harder to believe now that she was stuck in such situations.

The Greyhound began moving, the flashing light above the driver's seat stating the destination: "Portland, Oregon: Seaside Route." Portland was said to be a long way away, but her destination laid in between, along the Washington coast. She was meant to get off at a place called Port Angeles, and from there take another charter to Forks. She hadn't ever heard of either, but she hoped to find the transition points easily enough without getting lost, at least before the sun set. She read over the instructions her father had sent to her over three weeks ago again, making sure she wouldn't miss anything, but as clearly as she could see, she would be on this bus for the next three hours and forty minutes.

She checked again the money in her wallet, enough dollars to pay for the next fare to get to what her father told her to call _Dom_, an affectionate name for the rundown and humble accommodations he'd worked to pay for in Forks; the Polish equivalent for "home." He had made the same trip as Imke had a year ago, leaving herself and her twenty-two year old brother, Andrejz, back in their impoverished town off the Polish countryside. Their mother was off in the capital city trying to make her own living, having grown awfully disenchanted from loving their father years ago, and sick of living in such near-impoverished conditions. She still loved her children dearly, but among her own struggles to survive, often only sent a distanced letter or a phone call every week or so. She disapproved of their father leaving them for America, on a desperate and silly attempt to find a better life for all of them. Some distant friend from his early years lived in Portland and helped him find a small town equivalent to the size of the one he'd left, and joined him with a landlord of a small living complex off of central Forks. A year later, now that he'd worked to stabilize their bills and dues with his job at the mechanic's garage, he sent for his seventeen year-old daughter to join him. Andrejz denied the offer to join, having made his way out of a workman's university in town and wanting to work through his own life in Poland. But Imke was hardly given a choice, for her father (and her mother, to an extent) recognized her brightness and her inability to fulfill it within their home country. With such youth, her father hoped his daughter would gain as great of opportunities for the future as America had promised.

Imke was unsure of whether or not she disagreed with this, but what occupied her as the bus moved out of Seattle, was how already her visions of this place disagreed with what she saw before her. How she'd imagined it to be so bright, and with lovely people! Yet she was met with a gray noon, rain leaving long and vain-like streaks on the window by her side, and grisly workmen sitting beside her, grunting to themselves.

The long nights on the charter boat from the Eastern coast of Russia, following a long haul of trainrides from her home country, left her tired. She still felt skeptical about sleeping, though; even while she knew she had nearly four hours of peace on the bus, she was racked to the rim with nerves, about getting to this proclaimed American _"dom" _and the life that awaited her afterwards. She did not sleep on the way to Port Angeles, but instead stood wringing her hands alternately around each wrist, and casting curious glances at the Americans who sat around her, the numbers slowly decreasing as those who lived just outside of Seattle departed to go to their own homes.

Port Angeles was waiting for Imke in the nighttime darkness, the rain growing steadier and heavier as the coastline drew nearer. Thankfully, though, the bus was there for Imke as she left the previous one. She managed her way aboard, asking with the English she'd learned for several years in school how much she would have to pay and if this was, in fact, the bus that went to Forks, Washington. And then, after a quick ride in comparison to the first, Forks itself waited for her.

The place was calm, the town too small to have a covered bus stop. So Imke lugged out her three bags, through which she carried all the belongings she could afford to take with her. The night was thick, but it was not incapacitating due to the dim glow of the downtown storefronts. She smiled to herself for a moment as she looked upon this, the smallness of it reminding her of the home she'd left behind. She set down a small leather duffle, worn with a good fifteen-years' use, so she could pull out that same set of instructions from her father. She leaned over it so that the rain wouldn't spread the ink. As she did so, the bus pulled away and left her utterly alone. She focused on the paper before her, squinting to see with only the dim background light; if she didn't do so, she would start to realize the isolating and dark scene around her. It was embarrassing, really, but after seventeen years, Imke had never really outgrown fear of the dark. And Andrejz always gave her such hell about it! But Andrejz wasn't here now, no one really was. She told herself strictly to stop thinking such things and to focus on getting out of the rain ... and the dark. The instructions were as follows:

"Imke, You will be downtown when you leave the bus. The home is two and a forth miles to the right of the main street. 1417 Alder Street. The door is dark-colored. The walls have much ivy. I must work every evening, and I cannot afford to leave until midnight. Please find your way safely. I love you dearly. Papa."

She adjusted her backpack before picking up her second bag again, then unlocking the third so she could roll it behind her. The rain had managed to become heavier, and even started to blow at an angle, so it would go in her face no matter how she tried to avoid it. Aside from this, she didn't mind the walk. She jumped at a residential dog who barked at her through a fence, a black mut whose fur caused him to blend into the night. To avoid keeping near it, Imke crossed the thin street; she would have to be on that side eventually regardless. She did not care to check both ways before doing so. It was nearing on eleven, and such a dead town would surely not have any cars so late.

And as her feet stepped over the curb onto the street, and at the sight of the brightest light shining in her eyes, her instinct was to step far away, away from the stark danger of a car as it came flying by. In doing so, she rammed her ankle into the curb and fell back onto the concrete, elbows grazing the pavement as she tried to catch herself. But as far as the conditions of things were concerned, her luggage was met with a more problematic turn of events. The rolling suitcase slipped from her grip and into the gutter, its flimsy and worn-down zipper finally ripping from the fabric at the fall, allowing for a an explosion of clothes to fall into the murky water which accumulated at the side of the street.

He had known he'd made a mistake before he even made it. He was driving as quickly as always, his reflexes as solid as ever, yet he didn't believe there was any reason to slow in the midtown streets at so late an hour. No one was ever walking here past nine, aside from this night. He was aware of her presence when she very first came into sight. He didn't slow drastically, seeing how she was practically still near the side of the street and couldn't possibly be in front of his car before he went by. He honestly didn't mind being a jerk tonight, even to whoever that was. It was Alice and Jasper's anniversary night, and he just wanted to get home as quickly as possible and into his own quarters to avoid any of their lingering thoughts on the matter. He was returning from the hospital; on some afternoons, he would come and sit with Carlisle in his office while he wasn't visiting patients. Edward already gained a medical degree in the past, though that was definitely an unknown subject to the public. Still, what held him from ever presenting it was a lack of control around blood, a matter which presented itself all too often in a place like Forks Hospital. Afternoons like this helped him, he liked to believe, to desensitize himself to the urges that seemed overwhelming in such situations. But they were always trying situations to him, so the better he could get home to a night of peace was the best for him.

But as he passed, and saw what he'd done to the anonymous young lady in the process, knocking her off her feet and causing a mess, he took a mental pause to analyze the situation. He slowed his Volvo and very soon, the slowing came to a complete stop a few yards from where the encounter had occurred. He wondered if he had the nerve in him to be such a jack-ass and speed on regardless? But from the moment he saw her face, he knew he didn't. So startled, with locks of hair sprawled in her face, sticking to her wet forehead. And he had to admit to himself, the girl's face was new, and his curiosity was tugging at the back of his mind, wondering why someone previously unknown to the miniscule town of Forks would be wandering around town so late at night. Such thoughts occupied him as he put the car in park, opening and closing the door behind him as he walked over to the girl. She was young, he saw that, as young as him. And as she stood herself up slowly, brushing the lingering leaves and miscellaneous pebbles from her back and sides, she most certainly was an unknown face.

A pretty face, which was a thought to peak Edward's curiosity. Such description was hard to come across in humans, especially when he lived daily with Rosalie, the so-called epitome of aesthetic beauty. But this girl's beauty wasn't entirely aesthetic. By means of her face and her body, she was mostly plain. Her frame was slender, showing a lack of muscle but still a fair bit of health left in her, heart-shaped face that reminded him of Esme's, hair that was cut short and weighted down drastically by the pouring rain. But when she looked up from where she came to pick herself up, she met his eyes and her face illuminated. Those eyes, hazel and glowing. They showed an intent of genuine and kind nature, and resembled that of a doe's – fearful, cautious, yet so very curious.

Edward had to remind himself to speak to her; he had nearly just run her over, it would be creepy of him to keep silent as he approached. "Hey, are you alright? Are you hurt?" He saw her fall; he knew she wasn't injured, and he could hear her pulse thudding through her veins to know there was nothing abnormal aside from the racing of her heart from exhilaration at the situation. But he needed to remain as human as ever in this encounter.

But Imke found herself with a profound difficulty to find words. The face she looked towards was inhuman. For a moment, with much anxiety, she genuinely believed she had indeed been violently struck by the passing car and this figure before her was her angel of passage into the afterlife. There seemed no other sense to it, this man was far too handsome. Her thoughts transferred then from the silly theory of having died, to embarrassment of looking so shabby as she stood before him. Pulling strands of short hair from her face to behind her ear, she looked down, as if to seem occupied with the clothes which had spilled from the suitcase. "No, no it was my fault. I am sorry, please do not worry about myself." Her accent was heavy and evident of East-Europe. Edward instantly knew this, through his extensive span of language study, though he'd never managed to learn those languages. He set himself to squatting next to the suitcase and helping her gather the spewed clothes and replace them in the broken suitcase. "The zipper seems to have broken. Where were you trying to go? It's a bit late to be travelling."

She met eyes with him as they both knelt next to the gutter, and couldn't remember the street name, so simply managed: "Home."

"Home? You've just moved here?" He persisted kindly, as he stood her suitcase upright again without managing to let anything else fall through the broken crack. She nodded, and acknowledged this was the first that she had met here in this new home of hers. So young, like her, and possibly this accident could one day bring them to be friends. She had fallen quiet after her silent response, not fond of instigating conversations unless necessary due to her language barrier. "Let me drive you there, you shouldn't be out in the rain." He stopped himself after saying this; what was he doing? He and his family had agreed upon isolating themselves as much as possible, for the sole reason of keeping their origins secret. Yet, here he was, offering a ride to a girl whom he'd never met before in his life. Yet, what other option could he have weighed? She was drenched, stuck with bags (one of them broken), obviously out of her elements, and looking back at him with those eyes. A ride couldn't hurt. For a moment, Imke was near responding with _I appreciate it_, though she couldn't quite remember how to pronounce the word "appreciate" without stumbling, and didn't want to embarrass herself in front of this handsome man. So instead she nodded and gave him a subtle smile, lips rounded and pink, _feminine. _He helped her to carry her bags to his car and set them in the back seat. As he closed the door, he looked over at her yet again. The events of the past few minutes had passed quickly, and he'd almost felt rude for forgetting. "My name is Edward."

She responded with that same warm smile, and: "Imke. My name is Imke."


End file.
